CHAPTER TEN

Before dawn there was the Battle Mass, and then Madame exerted her farspeech power to transmit an enigmatic “we come” to Pallol, insuring that the invasion fleet would be poised to exploit the bombardment of Finiah’s wall. Sunrise was less than an hour away and if past performance was any criterion, Lord Velteyn and the members of his Flying Hunt would be back at their stronghold after the night’s foray.

Claude strode along nearly at the end of the procession heading for the flyer and wished Felice would shut up. She was once again attired in her black leather ring-hockey armor, which had been beautifully refurbished by Old Man Kawai’s artisans, and she was wild with anxiety lest she should miss the war.

“I wouldn’t take up any room. And I swear I won’t say a word during the flight! Claude, you’ve got to let me come with you. I can’t wait for you to come back after the strike. What if you don’t make it?”

“If Velteyn nails the flyer, you’d go down with us.”

“But if you get away, you could put me down right outside Finiah! Say, at the breach in the wall on the land side of the peninsula. I could go in with the Firvulag on the second wave! Please Claude!”

“The Hunt could have spotted us by then. Landing could be suicide, and that’s not what this fight is all about. Not for me and Madame Guderian, at any rate. Finiah is just the beginning of our war. And Richard’s got Martha to live for now.”

Up ahead, villagers were pulling the nets from the black bird. A few candles gleamed in the mist where Amerie was blessing the aircraft.

Felice said, “I could help you with the Spear, Claude. You know what an awkward big bastard it is. I could be useful.” She clutched at the old man’s bush shirt and he stopped abruptly and took her by, the shoulders.

“Listen to me, girl! Richard is all strung up. He hasn’t slept for more than twenty-four hours and he’s half-crazy with worry because of Martha, Even with the transfusions, Amerie gives her less than a fifty-fifty chance. And now Richard has to fly a combat mission in an exotic aircraft with a couple of old crocks and the future of Pliocene humanity riding on his tail! You know how he feels about you. Having you in the flyer during the mission could be the last straw. You say that you’d keep out of the way. But I know you couldn’t help asserting yourself once the heat was on. So you’re staying here, and that’s that. We’ll do our job and then run for home, and with luck we’ll leave Velteyn completely mystified about where we’ve gone. We’ll come back and pick you up. I promise you that if we make it, we’ll get you to the battle not more than an hour or so after the main assault begins.”

“Claude… Claude…” Her face peered through the T-shaped opening in the black hoplite helmet, panic and fury and some other more alien emotion at war with reason. Claude waited, praying that she wouldn’t jump him. But he was so steeped in fatigue that he almost didn’t give a damn whether or not she knocked him cold and forced the others to let her take his place. It was in her mind, all right; but she also knew that he was by far the better shot.

“Oh, Claude.” The blazing brown eyes closed. Tears poured behind the cheekpieces of her helmet and the green plumes flattened as she wrenched away from him and fled back toward Madame’s cottage.

He let out a long breath. “Be ready when we get back!” he called, and then hurried to where the others were waiting.

The great bird crept furtively from its hiding place. When it was in the clear, it mounted the predawn sky like a violet spark going up an invisible chimney, attaining an altitude of 5000 meters in a thunderclap inertialess surge. Angélique Guderian stood beside Richard, clutching the back of his seat with one hand and her golden torc with the other. Richard had changed into his old spacer’s coverall.

“You got us hidden, Madame?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied faintly. She had said hardly a word since their safe return.

“Claude! You ready?”

“Whenever you give the word, son.”

“We’re on our way!”

A split second later, the belly hatch rolled smoothly back. They hovered motionless above a patch of microscopic jewels, shaped roughly like a tadpole with its tail joined to the eastern bank of the Rhine.

“Why, it’s on the Kaiserstuhl,” Claude said to himself.

The patch grew, spread, its star-cluster blur clarifying into twinkling lights as the flyer dropped, subsonically this time, and stopped dead in the air about 200 meters above the highest eminence of the Tanu city.

“Give it to ’em,” said Richard.

Claude horsed the great Spear into position and took a bead on the line of fiery dots marking the Rhineside wall. Somewhere in the graying mists of the river waited a flotilla of Firvulag boats loaded with human and exotic troops.

Keep her depressed, old man! You don’t want to boil your own folks out of the water!

He raised the caplock and swung it aside. There, right there. Touch the second stud.

A thin bar of green-white lanced without sound.

Down below, a tiny orange flower bloomed, but the line of dots atop the wall remained unbroken.

“Shit!” Richard exclaimed. “You missed! Elevate!”

Calmly, Claude took aim once again, pressed the stud. This time there was no burst of orange fire, only a dull-red glow. Perhaps a dozen of the rampart lamps were swallowed by it.

“Hee-yow! Gotcha!” screeched the pirate. “Make a one-eighty, Claudsie-boy! Ready for the back door!”

The flyer spun on its vertical axis and Claude found himself aiming at a point near the base of the shining tadpole’s tail. He fired and missed… high. He fired and missed again… low.

“Jesus, hurry it up!” urged Richard.

The third time, the blast struck the wall squarely, melting it at a point where the causeway of the peninsular neck met the extinct volcanic mass of the Kaiserstuhl proper.

Madame moaned. Claude felt dragon talons grip his guts.

“Are they coming?” Richard demanded. “Hang on, Madame! Sweet Christ, Claude, get on with ft! Never mind zapping the Tanu buildings. Go for the mine!”

The old man wrestled the Spear around, a sudden bunt of sweat greasing his hands and making them slip on the weapon’s glassy butt. His tensed-up muscles trembled as he tried to bring the weapon to bear upon the small blue constellation that marked the mine workings. He could not depress the Spear sufficiently to bring the target into range. “Quick, Richard! Take her a couple of hundred meters south!”

“Aye,” growled the pirate. The flyer changed position in the twinkling of an eye. “That better?”

“Wait… yes! I’ve just about got her. Have to do this right the first time. Only have one blast at full zap…”

“Merde alors.” Madame whispered.

The old woman staggered away from Richard to crash against the right bulkheads. Fists pressed to her temples, she began to scream. Claude had never heard such a sound from a human throat, such a distillation of anguish, horror, and despair.

At the same moment, something flashed past the flight deck port. It glowed neon-red and was shaped like a mounted knight.

“Oh, God,” said Richard flatly. Madame’s screams cut off and she fell senseless to the deck.

“How many?” asked Claude. He tried to get a grip on himself, tried to steady the heavy Spear on target, prayed that his damned old body wouldn’t betray him at this last extremity. They had almost done it! Almost…

“I make it twenty-two.” Richard’s calm voice seemed to come from a considerable distance. “The whole Round Table circling us like Sioux around a wagon train. All scarlet except the leader, and I’d put his spectral class somewhere in the BO range, look out!”

One of the figures, the blue-white one, soared down and took a position immediately below the flyer. He drew his glassy sword and thrust it upward. Three Roman-candle globes of ball lightning left the tip and soared rather slowly toward the open belly hatch. Claude dodged, pulling the Spear out of the way, and the things flew into the aircraft, where they began caroming off the panels and decking, hissing and emitting a fearful smell of ozone.